digital workplace

As Christmas comes hurtling over the horizon, many of us will be dusting off the Monopoly and Cluedo in preparation for the arrival of family and friends. It got me thinking about that oft-quoted – actually, over-quoted – thing called gamification. Cited by some as the holy-grail of employee engagement and others as a load of old twaddle (<- I sit somewhere in the middle! :-) ), what exactly is it?

So, I raided the internet and stole ideas and information from experts … er … I mean did some research … and, below is my unbiased (<- is that possible?) view of what it is and some simple tips for using it effectively and some things to avoid …

What is it?

Gamification is the use of game play mechanics for non-game applications, for example, in the workplace … or, put another way, turning ‘work in to play’.

When has it been used for in business?

Gaming has been used in a variety of scenarios in a business context, for example:

When rolling out a new initiative, such as new values or ethics, where you want people to actively engage with information to understand its implications for them as an exercise in shared understanding.

Mastery (shouldn’t be too hard and players need to see they are progressing)

Purpose (players need to understand why they are playing – what the point is).

Scores aren’t everything – people prefer validation through prestige to simple number scores which can alienate people particularly if a small number of players get way ahead of everyone else on points.

The game should be about the journey and not the end result – players need to enjoy the process of playing.

Make it social – i.e. let people share their progress/successes with colleagues.

The four basic characteristics of gaming are:

Simple, recognizable cues for next actions.

Clear, instant feedback for actions taken.

Easily identifiable markers for ranking and performance.

Streamlined, accessible paths to further achievement.

It’s not as easy as it sounds!

Getting gamification right is harder than it sounds. Gaming is best used to amplify existing behaviours rather than introduce new behaviours, particularly if these feel unnatural to players. Gaming won’t make people do something they don’t want to do (i.e. it has to be a part of something that players already have an underlying, intrinsic interest in doing).

Common pitfalls when setting up gamification include:

Thinking gamification is ‘pointsification’ … i.e. simply allocating points to a set of activities. This will fail very quickly.

Ignoring the multi-generational workplace and different technical skill levels can alienate large numbers of employees.

Intentionally designing for addictive behaviour. If a player knows when to expect a reward based on their actions, this is predictable feedback and acts as a motivator. However, gamification becomes addictive when feedback is not entirely predictable. For example, if a player receives predictable rewards most of the time, but sometimes receives an extra reward for the same action, this encourages the player to repeat this action more to receive the disproportionate reward. Casino fruit machines are a good example of this. You don’t want your game to be addictive!

Gaming for gaming’s sake without a clear purpose.

Ignoring cause and effect. This is not understanding potential unintended consequences. This means that just because you design a process to achieve a particular outcome, you may unintentionally design for a different outcome entirely.

Creating gamification clones – ripping off existing games without understanding the underlying mechanics and principles of gaming mechanics. Gartner believes 80% of current gamified applications will fail to meet their business objectives primarily due to poor design.

Creating a game which encourages players to play to win. When winning becomes the key motivation, your game has failed and players will game your system to get to the top of the pile.

Gaming silos

A growing problem with gamification is that every system you buy-in these days has elements of gamification in them. Even SharePoint has some pretty lame badges as part of its community sites set-up. This is a similar problem to social silos where every system also comes with commenting, liking, rating etc. where social activity is locked in to a system and can’t be shared across an entire intranet or easily searched. In my view, it would be much more powerful in both the gamification and social spheres if they were enterprise-wide avoiding duplication left-right-and-centre!

So, there you have it!

I hope you have a wonderful holiday and a happy, wholesome and fulfilling New Year!

One of the simplest ways to make web pages more interactive is to let users comment on the content. However, this isn’t as simple as it might at first seem. There’s an art to writing content which elicits the desired conversation. It’s also not straightforward engaging effectively in an on-line conversation resulting from a piece of web content. So how do you do this effectively and what are the implications of turning on commenting?

First of all, the underlying process of commissioning, writing and publishing changes. The diagram below shows how this process might work BEFORE you turn on commenting.

Broadly speaking, you identify your audience; work out what you want to achieve; draft the key messages to achieve that outcome; decide which channel(s) you are going to publish in to; draft text to suit the chosen channel(s); sign it off; publish and walk away and get on with the next thing on your To Do List. All this tends to happen in splendid isolation.

Turning on commenting fundamentally changes the process. Without commenting the end product is your content. With commenting, the end product is the conversation NOT your content. In fact, your content really just becomes something to talk about – the value is not bound up in the content alone, but mostly in the conversation it triggers.

This changes the publication process to something more like the below.

There are clearly more steps in the process and there are more considerations within each step:

Audience: With commenting turned on, you have less control over who might read your content. Commenting makes content leak across traditional audience boundaries as comments surface in readers’ networks and attract attention – this is unpredictable. You therefore need to be mindful that your content will have greater reach so don’t be too parochial and don’t make statements which could be misinterpreted by employees in other parts of the business.

Outcome: You need to be ABSOLUTELY crystal clear about what you want to achieve to avoid your content being hijacked by commenters with ulterior motives or hidden agendas. The outcome needs to be clear so that you can steer conversations back on track to achieve it if necessary.

Message: Similar to Outcome above, your message needs to be clear or the comments will quickly highlight any lack of clarity through questioning. If the commenting thread descends into a series of confused questions, the message will be considerably diluted … it’ll also make you look unprofessional!

Channels: This is pretty much the same – you’ll chose a suitable channel to suit your audience and outcomes.

Draft text: When you don’t have commenting switched on, if your text is unclear or lends itself to unintended interpretations, the worst that can happen is that readers will walk away confused or getting the wrong end of the stick. With commenting turned on, they will express their confusion under the content. This is good, as it means as a content provider you are accountable for what you write and you are quickly made aware of any inadequacies in your text. However, you are likely to look a bit incompetent if there are gaping holes in what you write or if you are unclear or ambiguous. You need to tighten up your prose and always get someone unrelated to the content to read it before you publish to get their feedback.

Get sign-off: With commenting, this isn’t just a case of getting the content owner to sign-off what you’ve written. You’ll need to alert other managers from other teams who might also have an interest in the content that you are publishing so they can also monitor what is said and respond if need be. You’ll also need to read surrounding content in the channel into which you are about to publish to ensure you are not about to unintentionally inflame an already tempestuous discussion happening on the site. If emotions are running high, the smallest incitement can kick things off! It’s best if your content doesn’t become that incitement!

Conversation: A conversation may or may not result from the publication of your content. If it doesn’t, you don’t necessarily need to feel like you’ve failed … some content just doesn’t trigger comments. If a conversation does ensue, you need to respond in the right way. The points below should help you do that.

Harvest: In my experience, this is the most overlooked and often the most valuable part of the process. Seldom do content owners ask themselves: What have I learned from this conversation? For example, conversations can help you plan your next comms, can help you build Q&As or update content on pages to fill the gaps which have been highlighted by commenters. You might want to contact people who have taken part in the conversation when setting up focus groups and content/site review panels or, if they are particularly passionate, you might be able to harness that passion to spread your messages further. Finally, conversations often contain great ideas and show you new ways of thinking about things – take advantage of these making sure you ALWAYS attribute them to the originator. If nothing else, the conversation will clearly show you if the readers have got it or not!

Top tips for engaging successfully in an on-line conversation triggered by your web content:

So, you’ve published your stuff and commenting is kicking off – here’s how to join the conversation:

allocate sufficient time to monitor and respond to comments – if you don’t respond there is a danger of a self-feeding, whinge-fest emerging

stick around and follow-up on comments you make – making a comment and then leaving is not engaging in a conversation

alert other people who may have an interest so they are aware of the conversation and can join in too

respond first and fast to de-rails (by de-rail I mean where a commenter tries to manipulate the conversation to air a grievance on another topic)

deal with negative sentiment head on – ignoring negative sentiment results in it spiralling out of control

always bring the conversation back to the facts which will take the heat out if it – don’t get involved in arguments or get emotional

keep your responses in the thread – don’t say: “I’ll contact you off-line” as this kills the conversation

tone of voice is critical – be honest, open and authentic.

Never:

preach at people or talk down to them

hide behind quotes from company literature or use management speak as a surrogate for authentic engagement

use jargon, abbreviations or marketing/business language

throw your weight around and act in a heavy handed manner because of your position in the company.

So, there you have it … at least my view of it … if yours differs, please feel free to comment and I’ll try to follow my own advice in the ensuing conversation! :-)

If I was in the happy position of designing a new digital workplace completely from scratch, I would develop a beautiful suite of applications which seamlessly ooze into one another and which dance daintily onto the variously sized screens used by employees in offices, on trains and while sitting comfortably on heated toilet seats … I think you get the idea!

However, in the real world, a digital workplace is a cobbled together bunch of bits and pieces, from e-mail to expenses systems, developed and purchased by a company over many years. In most cases, making wholesale changes to your bits and bobs to bring them closer together in terms of usability and user experience is out of the question.

This only really leaves one option. Being clever with the spaces between your digital workplace components. How you design a fluid user experience into these spaces will make or break your digital workplace. In fact, if you’re not clever with the way you squeeze your users through these narrow spaces, they probably won’t even know they’re in a digital workplace at all.

I think taking this approach is pragmatic, simpler, quicker and cheaper than focussing on the experience inside each application. It also feels much less daunting and more do-able.

John is a press officer in the media relations team at Blah Blah plc. Like John, most of his peers are ex-journalists. They all started their careers in local newspapers, writing about village fêtes, lawn mower thefts from back yards, court news and their local football team. One by one, they all got promoted and specialised in a particular field and covered a larger patch, before moving to regional media outlets and finally on to the nationals. John worked for ten years at a popular national tabloid newspaper.

John and his colleagues all progressed based on the quality of their end product – articles; broadcast media segments – essentially, a presentation of some kind. The quality of their end product depends upon things like: how good their sources are; how skilled they are at writing and crafting narrative; their research skills; and also their instinct for sniffing out as good story.

Then one day, John saw a job advert for a press officer at Blah Blah plc. It offered a better salary and benefits, more secure employment and a far less claustrophobic/nepotistic culture. So he applied, got the job and made the switch from journalist to spokesperson.

John soon found out that, while all his old journalistic skills are still very valuable in his new role, success is measured very differently. The output or end product of John’s labours shifted from being a presentation for a mass audience to his ability to influence a much smaller set of identifiable individuals. So the presentation subtly shifts from being an end in itself to a means to an end. That end being influence.

So, what’s all this got to do with internal comms? I believe the journey that John has undertaken above, is exactly the same journey that we as internal communicators must now make to remain effective in a social organisation – by which I mean an organisation with internal systems which support commenting and conversation and which are used widely by employees.

In organisations which are strongly hierarchical and where on-line, social engagement functionality is not available, employee communications is highly managed, structured and controlled. What employee comms people produce in these types of organisations is well crafted presentational material – be it a news item or a communication from the CEO or senior manager. This is akin to journalism inside.

As an organisation introduces functionality which supports connection and conversation, employee comms people need to compete with other information providers to attract attention to their content through the noise. This will never be achieved by continuing to produce corporate presentational material – however well crafted. The conversation around a piece of content, which creates context and brings it to life becomes, arguably, more important than the original content itself. Influence comes from being part of that conversation and change happens as a result of it.

Being part of the conversation, explaining – sometimes defending – the company’s position to employees and trying to influence behaviours is much more akin to being a spokesperson for your organisation, inside your organisation. This means no more hiding behind a wall of content and being invisible to employees. It means stepping in to the limelight, being the most connected person in your organisation and discussing openly and honestly the messages you have been tasked with delivering and describing and exhibiting the behaviours you are trying to promote. It also means being accountable in a much more transparent way than we have ever had to be before.

Pretty scary? Certainly. Very exciting? Definitely!

The great news is that, as employee comms people, we already have a fantastic set of skills to help us flourish in this new environment. All we need to do shift our thinking. There really has never been a more exciting time to be in employee comms … and a social organisation is the perfect environment for us to flourish and grow.

The A303 is a road which runs from the affluent, urban, south of England to the beautiful, rural, south west of England – the latter, a region which conjures up for many English people long, hot, summer holidays by the sea. I’m sure many countries have an equivalent road. But surely, only in England, would someone actually write a book about such a road … and only English people would surely buy it in their thousands! I surprised myself by being one of them … reading it and really enjoying it.

Anyway, about halfway along the A303 – highway to the sun (<- the author’s description, not mine!) – lies a pile of prehistoric stones called Stonehenge, described as one of the ‘wonders of the world’. Frankly, it’s a pretty disappointing wonder of the world compared to some of the others littering the globe but, nonetheless, it has for hundreds of years been the meeting place at the Summer Solstice for various groups who purport to worship the sun or feel the urge to commune with their ancestors. The most famous of these groups is The Stonehenge Druids.

Every year on 21 June at sunrise, the Druids, accompanied by various pagans and occultists are drawn to Stonehenge to do their thing – they just can’t help themselves. Similarly, in the midst of winter in the dark and distant land of Denmark (<- unless you live there or near it … in which case it’s near and dark), an equally strange group of misfits gathers each year to commune with one another at the ancient ceremony (<- by conference standards at least) of IntraTeam. They just can’t help themselves!

As well as being part of the odd group of people who read books about roads, this year, I’m also one of the strange misfits gravitating to IntraTeam in Copenhagen in February. I haven’t spoken at any conferences for some time because, to be frank, in most cases there isn’t much in it for me. IntraTeam is different though. Without wishing to compromise my normally cool and calm image … I’m like Augustus Gloop in the Chocolate Factory! The riches on display are breath-taking.

I fully intend to gorge myself until I’m fit to burst … and really hope you can make it too!

Following my last post, several people asked me to explain further what I meant by my Medieval Fable … some even seemed a little upset (<- sorry about that) … so, here goes!

Simple diagram on the left

In May 2011, I published the simple diagram on the left asking the question about the relationship between the intranet as we then knew it and this new-fangled Digital Workplace thingy which people were beginning to talk about (if you have time to read through the comments on the original post, they make quite interesting reading).

You see the ‘graph’ on the right of the simple diagram on the left … er … well, that’s the moral of my fable.

WHAT, you need MORE explanation??? Seriously, what’s not to get???

OK … I’m going to go out-on-a-limb here and make some assumptions (<– I realise that this is tantamount to sticking a ‘Kick Me’ sign on my own back, but here goes …!)

Assumption 1: Any company worth its salt has an intranet of some description.

Assumption 2: An intranet is an environment/platform/whatever where content is published (<- I know the word published is a bit 1990s, but it still pretty-much covers what has to happen to stuff for it to become visible to other people on an intranet).

Assumption 3: Most – maybe all (?) – intranets have an Intranet Manager of some description.

Assumption 4: Intranet Managers are appointed because they know something about intranets (even those who don’t could pick up the basics from half-a-day’s reading of a handful of great intranet blogs). Intranet Managers know stuff like: good governance is essential; intranet strategy needs to support the business objectives; put users at the centre; business- not technology-led; blah blah; etc. etc.

Assumption 5: Given all the above, being an Intranet Manager is not rocket science (<- that doesn’t make it easy by the way!).

Assumption 8: So, the more effective we are as Intranet Managers, the more invisible we are to users and, ironically, to senior management who only really take an interest when something goes wrong and they are looking for someone to blame (<- that probably came across a little more cynically than I intended but you know what I mean!).

… and then, along comes the Digital Workplace Monster. As my simple diagram on the left shows, the Digital Workplace Monster gobbles up the intranet. By gobbles up, I mean the intranet as we now know it, suddenly becomes a (small?) component of a bigger ecosystem known as the Digital Workplace.

To put it another way, the intranet becomes the utility cupboard under the sink in the Digital Workplace kitchen … the place where stuff (content) gets put so you can grab it when you need it. The stuff in the cupboard under the sink is important if you need to unblock the plug-hole, descale the kettle or clean the sink etc. … but, frankly, it’s not very exciting. It’s reliable … always there … and useful when you need it.

So, here’s the thing … six months ago you were the Intranet Manager – the go-to-guy (or guyette) guiding your organisation digitally into the twenty-second century. Today … you manage the cupboard under the kitchen sink.

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about.me

I manage the BT Intranet and am responsible for BT's internal, on-line channel strategy and social media. I live in Devon with my lovely wife and son and an ageing VW campervan. I'm a school governor at the wonderful KEVICC in Totnes, I do a bit of painting, write a bit of poetry and am trying to learn to play the guitar.